My Hands for War
Nightfall.
Something evil was coming down the wires tonight. Yuri tasted it in the air. The full moon hanging in the blackened sky promised peril and insanity. An uneasy silence reigned in the streets and the alleys of the Church District.
It was too quiet.
Granted, word of the near-invasion had spread across the city. The Pantheon refused to comment and the media refused to cover the incident, but there was no hiding such a large-scale deployment. It would have left everyone jittery.
Yet the stain of fear had infected all of Shinsekai. The roads were empty, the sidewalks deserted. Neon lights blazed for ghosts and shadows. Advertisements and pop music commanded an audience of none. Across the river, restaurants and pubs closed up early and quietly. The few travelers who dared to enter the district shunned the Church District altogether.
Something was coming here. But what?
At the ground floor of his safe house, Yuri prepared for war.
Seated by a couch, back to a wall, he faced the door. To his right was his assault railgun, to his left his backpack. His plate carrier and battle belt were already secured, weighed down with his tools, his weapons, his ammunition. His helmet rested atop his backpack, fitted with fusion vision goggles.
In his hands, he held a Bible.
He ran his fingers along the pages. His thumb rested on a spot. It called out to him, demanding his attention. He delicately slipped a fingernail in between the pages, then opened the book and read the first line that caught his eye.
Blessed be the Lord my rock, who trains my hands for war, my fingers for battle.
He smiled. Lowered his head. Closed his eyes.
Prayed.
Dear God, watch over us tonight. Devils prowl the streets. Send the mighty angels and archangels to defend us. Deliver us from evil, oh Lord, and grant us safety and victory. Amen.
When he opened his eyes, the overhead light shone brighter than before. Soft sparks danced within the lightbulb. A sense of peace, of purpose, filled his heart.
“Thank you,” he said out loud.
Then he turned on his eyeshields.
The news had nothing to say about the neighborhood, instead hyping up the body count of the Court-Liberated conflict. Social media was equally useless; the only publicly available content was at least a week old. The shopkeepers and the residents exchanged whispers and rumors on their group chat in their downtime, but there was no solid intel.
Then he heard the booming.
Loud, low, rhythmic, it sounded like the footsteps of a distant giant. The architecture of the city captured the sounds and funneled them through the narrow streets and alleys. Windows shook in their frames. Puddles quivered.
Yuri’s blood ran cold.
Ten seconds later, Nagase sent the first photo.
Forwarded from the group chat, the shot was grainy and blurry, washed out by the profusion of lights from every direction. At the entrance of the Shinbashi Bridge, silhouetted against the neon forest, stood an iron giant. Six stories tall, its body was a crude mockery of the human form. Its feet were enormous, its calves and knees humongous, but its thighs and hips were strangely shrunken in comparison. Balanced on a narrow pelvis was a broad triangle of a torso, smooth and featureless. Six colossal arms sprouted from six separate shoulder joints. The biceps were puny, the forearms bulging, the hands huge. A leering face rested on a powerful neck, serpentine tongue extended down to the collarbone. Upon its head rested a golden crown. Four lesser heads arrayed on either side of the main head, turned outwards to cover a full hundred-eighty degree arc, marching up to the very edges of the titanic shoulders.
Every hand grasped a weapon. Spears, swords, staves, oversized weapons worthy of an artificed giant. Every eye glowed like hellfire, burning red in the night. The photo captured it in mid-step, one foot planted on the ground, the other raised high, ready to trample the world below.
Attached to the photo was a short caption.
What the hell is this?!
An avatar. A statue crafted by believers, granted unnatural life by their gods, animated by the essence of abominations that had no place in a sane and ordered universe. They were the closest the New Gods could come to materializing in the post-Cataclysm world, at least for a prolonged period. Most other factions used avatars as objects of worship, as icons in their most secret of rituals for the most fervent of believers, as bridges between believer and believed.
The Pantheon employed them as weapons of mass destruction.
The STS had many ways to deal with avatars. Rocket launchers. High explosives. Air strikes. But those glory days were long gone. Here and now, supported only civilians, there was only one thing Yuri could do.
He typed a message.
_Evacuate the district now! _
There was no fighting an avatar. Not with man-portable weapons. Not for those without unbreakable faith. But the avatars of the Pantheon had a single, fatal flaw.
“Lycan, Samurai. Find the priests powering the avatar!” Yuri ordered.
Among the many gifts of Galen the White was Aethersight: the power to peer through the immaterial realm bordering the world, and find living souls. The priests would burn bright on the Aether. There would be no hiding from the eyes of Galen.
“Samurai, roger. Ah… Hold. There are two avatars!”
As Karim completed the sentence, a second photo arrived.
The first avatar was a third of the way across the bridge. The second avatar was hot on its heels, off to its left.
Where its partner was made of metal, this one seemed to have been baked from dough. Its white surface assumed the hues of all the lights that fell upon it. Corpulent bulges hinted at joints. Its feet were featureless white lumps, lacking even toes. Its torso was a soft, saggy mass, its gut hanging low over its hips. A pair of huge arms with three-fingered arms hung from its torso. A hundred smaller arms fanned out from its back. It was a walking arsenal, wielding scepters and sabers, lances and maces, axes and tridents. It had no neck, instead possessing heads stacked upon heads, a pyramid of heads, facing in every direction. Open mouths exposed sharp teeth and drooping tongues. Red and black lines streaked across the many faces, accentuating its terrifying visage. Atop its heads it wore an enormous golden crown, inset with twinkling jewels.
Yuri’s blood ran cold.
“Deadeye, get down to the street. Now!”
“Rog—”
Searing red light lanced through the night. A blood-red gloom filled the alley outside the window. Air ionized before the killing light, lending the beam an eerie violet glow.
An explosion rocked the world.
“Deadeye!” Yuri shouted.
“I’m okay! It missed me!”
Yuri heaved a sigh of relief. Then an avatar loosed a second energy strike.
Explosions thundered. Glass shattered. The windows shook. Alarms screamed.
People screamed.
Yuri grabbed his gear. Inside thirty seconds, he was kitted out for war. Keeping low, he burst out the safe house and into the alley.
All clear. The destruction had left this part of town untouched. But angry flames glowed in the distance, and a soft wind carried the scent of smoke.
In front of him, a door flung open. A man stepped out, a railgun in his hand. Behind him huddled a gaggle of children.
“Who’s there!” he shouted.
“Yamamoto!” Yuri replied.
“Thank God!”
“Get your family and get out of the neighborhood!”
“You’re not going to fight that thing?!”
A third energy blast ripped out overhead. The children shrieked. A woman screamed. The man cringed. Yuri dropped to a crouch.
“Let me worry about it! You take care of your family!” Yuri called.
“Where do we go?”
“South! Away from the avatars!”
Yuri pointed down the alley. The civilians fled. Yuri headed in the opposite direction.
“Samurai, Boomer. I’m at the riverfront. I have eyes on—oh shit!”
A colossal blast echoed in the streets.
“Boomer!” Yuri yelled.
“I’m okay! I’m okay! Got away before it could bring its staff around!”
“Deadeye is on the street,” Kayla reported. “I get the feeling the avatars are targeting us directly.”
That made sense. The Pantheon wouldn’t send their troops into a meatgrinder if they didn’t have to. Most of the residents would break and run, and the few who stayed to fight had nothing that could even scratch an avatar. Once the neighborhood was emptied out, they’d send in their soldiers.
“Lycan, give us something to work with here!” Yuri ordered.
“Wait one… Got it. Eyes on two big rigs parked at the crosswords of Shinbashi Plaza. Trailers are open. Two gravcars blocking off each leg of the crossroad. A squad of troops manning checkpoints. Avatars could have been deployed from there.”
“The priests must be nearby. Do you see them?”
Silence, for a moment.
“Rooftop of Chrysanthemum Heights. I see eight unarmed subjects seated on the ground. Eight armed contacts hanging around nearby, watching the stairwell and the street.”
“That’s the target,” Yuri declared.
The plaza was just across the bridge. It made sense, he supposed. Even in Riveria, no one could ignore the sight of gigantic avatars walking the streets. The Pantheon had to deploy their superweapons as close to the Church District as possible to minimize the risk of premature detection—but it also rendered their priests vulnerable to a ground assault.
“Link up at the Helix Bridge,” Yuri ordered. “We’ll assault Shinbashi Plaza, then Chrysanthemum Heights.”
This was it. The nightmares of the STS come to life: full-blown urban combat on the streets of a major city. The planners had thought it would be catalyzed a showdown between the New Gods. The possibility of the New Gods going after the STS was deemed remote.
Until now.
Yuri was the first to arrive, stopping at an apartment building on the western side of the Helix Bridge. Moments later, Karim sprinted into view.
“Blue blue blue!” Karim called.
“Blue!” Yuri echoed.
The younger man halted by a low-rise office complex on the other side of the road. Yuri poked his head around the corner.
The Helix Bridge was a marvel of modern engineering. Designed for pedestrian traffic, it spanned the dark waters of the river. Delicate helical structures, illuminated in webs of electric lights, coiled down the length of the bridge in organic spirals, supporting the structure. Walkways at either end fed into the river walks.
The overhead spirals prevented the avatars from crossing the Helix Bridge. They were forced to use the Shinbashi Bridge, a more conventional design with six lanes for motor vehicles.
The STS and the Pantheon would be aware of that.
The rest of the team assembled. Kayla next to Yuri, Will beside Karim. The distant footsteps grew louder, heavier, closer.
“We’ll cross the moment the avatars are on this side of the river,” Yuri said.
The buildings around them would block the avatars’ view, and hopefully their weapons too.
“Stand by, stand by…” Karim muttered.
Yuri breathed, fast and rapid, pumping up his body, preparing for an explosive sprint.
“Avatars have crossed the river. Go!”
Will peeled away, shot out into the sidewalk, rushed for the bridge—
Suppressed automatic gunfire chattered in the night. Bullets bit into the asphalt, throwing up small clouds of shrapnel. Swearing loudly, Will leapt for the safety of a parked car.
Yuri gritted his teeth. The Pantheon was forcing them into a tactic dilemma. Either the team rushed into the teeth of the guns, or they allowed the avatars to flank them. The next-closest bridge was a one-minute sprint down the street. Long enough for the avatars to round the corner.
But there was a third option.
“Lycan! Find the shooters!” Yuri shouted.
“On it!”
Kayla glanced behind her.
“I see the avatars! We’re running out of time!”
“Two weapons teams across the bridge!” Karim reported. “Team one is on the roof of the cafe across the river! Team two is at Noda House, level five, side one, window three!”
Yuri peeked around the corner once again. The cafe was a squat two-structure structure, anchoring the right side of the crossing. Across the street was Noda House, a tall, narrow commercial complex.
From where he was, he couldn’t engage the threats. He didn’t have the right angle to sight down on the threats. He’d have to step out into danger.
“Cover me!” Yuri yelled.
The operators laid down suppressing fire. Where they lacked volume of fire, they tried to make up for it with accuracy, sending hypervelocity flechettes roaring towards the machine gun teams. Yuri rushed out into the road, down the boulevard, towards the Bridge.
Rounds cracked past. Ricochets whined. He still couldn’t see any sign of where the enemy had set up their guns. With a final burst of speed, he flung himself at a concrete abutment. It was just barely wide enough to hide behind.
“Boomer, you’ve got Noda House! I’ll take out the cafe team!” Yuri yelled.
Will’s railgun was also fitted with an electromagnetic grenade launcher.
“Roger!” Will replied.
Yuri shifted his railgun to his right shoulder, bringing it to bear on the cafe. He triggered his laser rangefinder with his left hand, then thumbed the controls to program the grenade for airburst. The readout in the EGL’s optic shifted with every button press. A green crosshair appeared in the glass, telling him where to hold the weapon. Yuri swung his weapon up, aligning the red reticle with the crosshair.
He exhaled.
Pulled the trigger.
The weapon bucked against his shoulder. The caseless 40mm grenade arced silently through the air. Right above the cafe, just as it arced to point its nose towards the ground, the grenade exploded, showering the gun team in deadly shrapnel.
A millisecond later, a second grenade detonated inside Noda House with a muted flash. Glass blew outwards in a glittering shower. Fresh alarms kicked off. Thick smoke poured out the window.
“Cafe gun team down,” Karim reported. “Noda House needs another grenade.”
Will discharged a second grenade. More smoke and fire poured from the blasted window. As he watched, Yuri opened the breech of his EGL and grabbed a HE grenade from his bandoleer.
“Weapon teams are down! Cross the bridge now!” Karim called.
“Red! Red!” Yuri yelled, shoving a grenade into the EGL.
“Red!” Will called also.
Karim dashed across the bridge. Then Will. As Yuri readied for a sprint, he again became aware of a heavy pounding, booming down the streets.
“Step it up. Avatars are close,” Kayla said.
Grunting, Yuri rose to his feet. “Let’s go!”
Will and Karim provided overwatch. Yuri sprinted across the bridge, then Kayla.
This was the second time he had to cross the Helix Bridge under combat conditions, Yuri reflected. Back then he was chasing a suspect. Now he was running away from a pair of avatars. The universe surely had a sense of humor.
Everyone fell in on Yuri. He led them to a crosswalk down the street. Though bright lights glared down from the high-rises around the team, the road was deserted. There were no sidewalks here, just white lines demarcating pedestrian and parking areas. Paved with setts, the road was built for foot traffic, with vehicles an afterthought. Abandoned vehicles lined both sides of the road, some flashing emergency lights, leaving only a narrow aisle in the middle.
Shinbashi Plaza was two streets down. Two black gravcars blocked off the road. Yuri lowered his fusion goggles, set it to thermal imaging, and zoomed in.
Two bright figures stood behind the gravcars, each carrying a long gun.
“I’m going to cross the road and take the plaza under indirect fire. Lycan, with me. Deadeye, once I kick off, engage threats at will. Boomer, rearguard.”
Karim squeezed Yuri’s shoulder. Staying low, Yuri sprinted across the street, heading for a parked truck. He waited for a moment, then signaled Karim to join him. As the younger man dashed, Yuri crouched beside the wheel and leaned out.
He had a clean line of fire to the checkpoint. The soldiers were still milling around, still unaware of their presence. The city lights would degrade night vision, and the shadows would conceal him even further.
Karim patted his shoulder. Yuri breathed low and deep, calming his heart and muscles. He swung the goggle over his right eye up and out of the way, allowing him to peer through the EGL’s side-mounted optic.
One eye saw in black and white. The other in natural color. Both images were superimposed in his brain. The effect was slightly disorienting. He was more used to aiming with lasers with fusion vision, but without aiming lasers, he had to make to do with this. Switching between both eyes to aim his weapon, Yuri lased the closer gravcar. He punched in a few adjustments, then pointed the weapon at a high angle.
He launched a grenade. Swiveled right. Launched a second. Elevated the railgun. Fired his last.
The three grenades would form the points of a triangle, bracketing Shinbashi Plaza. He would have preferred an artillery bombardment, even a barrage from a 60mm mortar, but this would have to do.
The three grenades went off in rapid succession. The gravcars shuddered in the shock waves. The black figures disappeared from view.
“Samurai, Deadeye. No targets.”
“Copy. Deadeye, Boomer, patrol down the river walk. Lycan, with me. We’ll link up at Shinbashi Plaza.”
Gun up, Yuri stalked down the street, covering the left side of the road. Karim took the other. The parked vehicles forced them to bunch tightly up against each other. Downrange, shadows danced in flickering flames.
“Contact,” Kayla whispered.
Hypervelocity railgun shots rang out.
“Two Tangos down,” Kayla said.
Shinbashi Plaza occupied two city blocks, one on either side of the road. Each block was sliced diagonally in half, the road-facing side a swath of open space, the other half a cluster of high-rises and shopping malls. Chrysanthemum Heights occupied the western block of the plaza, a titanic apartment block shaped like an inverted L. A shopping arcade connected the legs of the L, forming the hypotenuse of a triangle.
The checkpoint was ruined. Glass silvers glittered along the roads. Alarms howled in every direction. The western gravcars had taken the brunt of the blasts. Set to airburst mode, the grenades had eviscerated the doors, windows and tires. Two soldiers of the Pantheon lay beside their vehicles, leaking blood from a thousand tiny wounds. The cordon at the eastern end of the plaza had caught another rain of frag, through far less concentrated. Two more bodies were strewn beside the vehicles, completely motionless.
To the north were a pair of big rigs, parked along the sidewalk. Their windscreens were starred across, their front tires deflated, their lights ruined. The trailers were open, the walls and rear lowered, exposed to the world. Past the trucks were two more gravcars, making up the northern end of the checkpoint.
Rounding the corner of Chrysanthemum Heights, Yuri spotted the survivors.
Illuminated by streetlights, two black-clad soldiers took cover behind the gravcars to the north, frantically scanning back and forth, carbines in hand. Through protected from incoming fire from the front, the layout of the plaza and their poor positioning left them exposed to oblique shots from the flanks, across the empty space of the plaza. Without thought, brain and body running on autopilot, Yuri lifted his railgun and fired.
The shot caught the left-hand gunman in the chest. Screaming in at one and a half klicks per second, the flechette blasted through his body armor, punched into his chest, and erupted into a rapidly expanding cloud of shrapnel, obliterating everything within his thoracic cavity. He jerked, then suddenly went slack and slumped against the engine block.
The other soldier immediately scooted away and laid down suppressing fire. Rounds blasted into the wall and the round around Yuri. Yuri pulled back, hearing the rounds ricochet.
“Contact! Tango by the northern checkpoint!” Yuri reported.
“Boomer, moving to flank!” Will called.
The shooting suddenly stopped. Yuri carefully leaned out.
Nothing.
“Lost track of the Tango,” Yuri said.
“I don’t like it,” Karim muttered, scooting up beside Yuri.
“I don’t have eyes on the Tango. Anyone see him?” Will asked.
A furious hiss answered him.
A colossal snake crawled down the road, its scales gleaming in the light. As it reared upright, Yuri discovered it had the torso of a man but the head of a serpent. A pair of powerful arms gripped an assault rifle to its chest. Eyes glowing like burning coals, its jaw opened to reveal rows of sharp teeth. A massive hood flared from its neck.
Yuri fired.
The flechette punched low into its side. Scales shattered. Flesh rippled. The Elect continued its approach, taking cover behind the vehicles. Two more hypervelocity railgun shots rang out, to no effect. Sprinting across the street, Karim transformed.
Inky darkness spewed from his pores. A black cloud consumed him. His legs lengthened, his arms elongated, his head metamorphosed. His jaw transformed into a snout. His shirt melted into black fur. Boots disappeared, revealing enormous paws. The cloud vanished.
Karim was gone, and in his place was an Elect of Galen the White.
Karim-Galen howled a challenge. The monstrous Elect hissed back. Karim-Galen parked himself behind the engine block of the big rig and leaned out. Bleeding from three wounds, the snakeman slithered around the rear of the truck at lightning speed. Karim-Galen blasted it in the chest with his railgun.
The monster’s torso jerked back. Its flesh rippled bonelessly, dissipating the energy of the blow. Its head arched toward, jaws wide open, plunging for—
A railgun roared.
A flechette punched through its jaws and out its crown.
The monster toppled on its side. Jerking and twitching, its enormous body writhed in its death throes. Black blood gushed from its wounds. Karim-Galen backed off, still covering the corpse.
“Tango down,” Kayla crowed.
Yuri had to admit, he was a little disappointed the werewolf hadn’t thrown down with the snakeman. But it didn’t matter. Luring out the monster so Kayla could shoot him in the head was the safer play. He didn’t know if Karim had intended it, but it worked out in the end.
Yuri checked the other bodies. He didn’t know if they were dead or alive, and didn’t particularly care. He put insurance rounds into each of their heads. The others assisted. This wasn’t law enforcement, this wasn’t even self-defense, but when the Pantheon brought in the avatars, they’d pulled out all the stops.
The last of the shots echoed in the night. The team regrouped at the entrance of Chrysanthemum Heights. They paused for a few moments, long enough to top off their weapons with fresh magazines, and for Yuri and Will to load their grenade launchers with buckshot shells.
“Hurry,” Karim-Galen growled. “I sense the avatars approaching.”
Yuri could hear them. Now that the shooting was over, he was again aware of the not-so-distant footsteps, steadily growing louder and closer. Red light seared the air, and something exploded.
Once again, Yuri wished for more indirect fire assets. Mortars to scour the roof in airburst shells. Gunships to sweep the battlespace clean. His grenade launcher was a poor substitute. Without eyes on the target, he wouldn’t be able to program it effectively. There was only one way to do this.
“Let’s go,” Yuri said.
The entrance to Chrysanthemum Heights, heavy glass doors tinted a deep black, was locked. Karim-Galen took one glance and extended long claws from his paws.
“I’ve got this,” the werewolf said.
Karim-Galen backed up two steps. With a ferocious shout, he charged the doors and spun around into a back kick.
Toughened safety glass blew inwards in a sparkling spray of rounded pebbles. Alarms screamed in the lobby beyond. Karim-Galen retracted his leg, then used the claws of his foot to rake the remaining shards from the frame. The second he stepped back, Yuri lifted his goggles and burst in.
A security guard in a white uniform cowered behind the front desk. Behind him, a bank of four elevators waited mutely. Openings fed into hallways on either side. The moment Yuri keyed on him, the guard squeaked and raised his hands.
“Don’t shoot! Don’t shoot!” he screamed.
Ignoring him for the nonce, Yuri rushed up to the left-hand opening and leaned out.
“Opening left, clear!”
“Opening right, clear!” Will reported.
Everyone turned to the guard, railguns at the compress ready, a heartbeat away from unleashing devastation.
“The Pantheon! Where are they?” Yuri demanded.
“I’m not with them! I work here, that’s all!” the guard whined.
“Do you know where they are?”
“They told me to let them into the roof! They had guns, magic, I—”
“How do we get to the roof?”
“Stairwell at the—”
“Contact front! Elevators coming down!” Karim-Galen interrupted.
Two elevators descended in synchrony. The ones in the middle of the bank, side by side. They were on the sixth floor. Fifth. Fourth.
“Get down!” Kayla urged.
Covering his head, the guard ducked low and scrambled to the hallway. Yuri backed up, planting himself beside a sofa. The others followed his example. There was no cover whatsoever in the lobby, but at least the furniture offered a quantum of concealment.
Third floor. Second. First.
Yuri rested his thumb on the safety.
The elevators opened.
Inside each car was an elephantman. They stood seven feet tall on legs the size of tree trunks, their muscled torsos nearly as wide as the open doors. In their gigantic arms they cradled ridiculously undersized assault rifles, with their trunks they wielded humongous axes. Their ivory tusks were sharpened to a fine point. They wore no armor; their unnaturally-hardened hide was protection enough.
They charged.
The team fired.
Hypervelocity flechettes drilled tiny holes into their foreheads. Massive geysers of blood and bone blew out the other side.
They staggered. They stumbled.
They carried on.
They were dead already. Their bodies hadn’t received the memo yet. Their axes swung around in crazed loops, their trunks flailing in every direction. Their arms twitched crazily, still refusing to release their carbines.
The dome shots should have put them down immediately. But that logic only worked on men, and these were Godmen. Even now, their god was still driving them like puppets, firing what was left of their brains with eldritch energies, sending them on a kamikaze mission from beyond the grave.
Crazed trumpeting blasted forth, a last-ditch sonic assault of the dead and damned. The eyeshields’ earbuds kicked in, killing the noise, but the sheer intensity of sound sent shockwaves through Yuri’s bones and organs. Nausea flashed through him. His legs wobbled.
And a dead elephantman was coming right at him.
“MOVE!” Will screamed.
Tons of muscle and bone bore down on Yuri. Sharp axes flashed through ragged arcs. There was so much for the conscious brain to process, too much.
So he didn’t.
He exhaled.
In that breath, he emptied his mind.
And in that moment, he saw only vectors and masses, trajectories along space-time, where things were now and where they would be, and the space where they would not be.
He moved.
Stepping off to his right, he pivoted counter-clockwise. Automatically he held his railgun out in front of him, placing a barrier behind himself and the ambulatory corpse. At that moment, the trunk whipped around from up high. It wrapped around his railgun, sending the clutched axe sailing behind and past Yuri. The elephantman staggered forward, and suddenly his head was aligned with the muzzle of the railgun.
Yuri fired the grenade launcher.
Thirty-six pellets of double-aught buckshot roared from the muzzle. All thirty-six pellets slammed into the monster’s face and neck. The tusks fractured in a dirty white cloud. Hide and flesh rippled under the point-blank impact. Its left eye burst in a welter of gore. The sheer force of the massive impact twisted its head to the side. Where its head went, the body followed.
Its knees caught the edge of a table.
It went down.
The table exploded in a storm of glass. The legs blew apart. The ground trembled as it hit the floor.
Yuri was already in motion, spinning around to address the other threat. That one was charging madly, blindly, at Will and Karim-Galen. Will leapt out of the way. Karim-Galen fired again into its head, but the railgun hadn’t had enough time to recharge completely, and the lower-velocity flechette just bounced right off.
Yuri waited.
Just long enough for it to plant one massive foot on the ground and lift its other.
And he fired.
The buckshot charge hammered the side of its knee. The dying Husk wobbled, suddenly buffeted by a new force vector its posture could not compensate for. Its knee buckled, its hip turned, and it slammed into the floor just inches from Karim.
Yuri inhaled.
Spun around and checked the lobby again.
“Clear,” Yuri declared.
“Clear!” Karim-Galen affirmed.
As one, they shot the elephantmen in the head. Again.
There was no such thing as overkill. Not when facing the Elect of the New Gods.
“I _hate _CQB with railguns,” Kayla said.
“They’re the only weapons we have that can penetrate that much armor,” Karim-Galen said.
Set to hypervelocity mode, the latest-generation railgun had a rate of fire of thirty rounds per minute. An improvement over the previous model, but nowhere near enough for close quarters battle. Not against Elect, when you had to hammer them with multiple shots in the A zone just to have a hope of putting them down.
Yuri fed more buckshot shells into his grenade launcher. “We gotta feed this back to the eggheads.”
“Maybe this time they’ll listen, eh?” Kayla said.
Weapons recharged, they returned to the front desk. Down the left-hand hallway, the guard poked his head around the corner.
“Is it over?” he squeaked.
“Yes. Now get back here,” Yuri said.
The guard scrambled to comply. He was unarmed. He didn’t even have pepper spray or a baton. Small wonder he’d caved so easily to the Pantheon.
“How do we get to the roof?” Yuri asked again.
“You’re going to fight the Pantheon?!”
“They’ve got two avatars running amok in the neighborhood. They’re destroying everything in their path. We’re the only ones who can stop them.”
The guard gulped. “Take the elevator to the top floor. There’s a roof access stairwell on the opposite side of the lobby.”
“Do we need a keycard or thumbprint or whatever to use the elevator?”
“Yes. But I can control the elevator from here.”
“Show us how to do it.”
The console was dead simple. Just a few mouse clicks and they were good to go. Yuri called one elevator and set it to take the team to the nineteenth floor. Then the twentieth. And he locked out the remaining elevators.
“You’ve got stairwells here?” Yuri asked.
“Yes. Down the hallways on either side.”
“Got it. Now I need you to do one last thing for me.”
“Yes?”
“Get out of here,” Yuri said.
The guard dashed to the exit.
The team headed up.
In the swift and silent ascent, the team readied themselves. As they patted down their pouches and checked their railguns, Yuri delivered the plan.
“Once we step, we break into buddy pairs. Deadeye with me on Alpha, Boomer and Lycan on Bravo. Alpha will go right, Bravo goes left. We will climb up the stairs to the twentieth floor. Make it simultaneous. We sweep the hallway and the lobby in a pincer movement, then rally on the roof access and head upstairs.”
“Roger that,” Will affirmed.
A heavy weight fell on Yuri. A hundred eyes opened in the spaces between realms, staring down at him and the team. A cold shiver ran down his spine. He glanced around the cramped car, but saw nothing.
“Aethersight,” Karim whispered. “They know we’re in the car.”
“Shut them down.”
Karim spoke. Less a word, more like a growl, his voice penetrated mere matter to touch higher and stranger realms. As the energy passed through Yuri, it brought to mind a pack of wolves sprinting across a plain, hounding a moose, bringing it down through coordination and sheer weight and numbers.
“Done,” Karim said. “But it won’t last.”
“Finish them before they can recover,” Yuri said.
The doors opened out into the nineteenth floor. The team spilled out, clearing the empty lobby. Alpha headed right, Bravo sprinted left.
Yuri and Kayla rounded the corner at the leg of the L-shaped hallway. The corridor was empty. Off to the right, the door to the stairwell beckoned. The pair stacked on the door, him by the knob, her by the hinge. And waited.
“Alpha, in position,” Yuri whispered.
Ten seconds later, Will spoke.
“Bravo, in position.”
“Go!” Yuri ordered.
Yuri opened the door. Kayla rushed in. Yuri followed her.
Dirty and cramped, the stairwell offered little room for maneuver. They pressed themselves up against the walls, railguns aimed high, slicing the pie as they headed up.
At the landing between the nineteenth and twentieth floors, a sense of dread washed over Yuri. He picked up the pace, heading up the stairs, railgun trained at the door—
The door opened.
A man in tac gear leaned out, exposing on his head and right arm, his fist holding a—
“GRENADE!” Yuri warned.
And fired.
The flechette ripped through his cheek. Not a kill shot. But the shock of the impact sent him spinning around.
And his hand splayed open.
And the grenade dropped.
And the spoon flew.
“DOWN!” Yuri screamed.
“GET DOWN!” someone in the hallway yelled.
Yuri hit the deck, opened his mouth, covered his head—
The grenade exploded.
The shock wave flowed down the stairs and bounced off the walls, pummeling him from multiple angles. A dense dust cloud drifted in the air. Hacking and coughing, Yuri got up and raced through the open door.
And a terrible force slammed into him from the left.
The blow tossed him at a nearby wall. Turning to the side, Yuri caught the impact on his right bicep. As he reoriented to the new threat, a weretiger roared into his face, huge paws battering at his shoulders and face. Yuri tucked his chin and held out his railgun, desperately warding off the blows, slipping out and to the left. The weretiger seized his weapon and charged, driving him backwards.
Yuri yielded to the tremendous force, offering no resistance, merely blending with it. Stepping back, he pivoted on the ball of his foot, leading the Godman into emptiness. Now off-balance, the Godman stumbled forward, paws still on the railgun. Yuri completed the turn, spinning the Godman through a clockwise circle, then slammed him against the wall.
The Elect caught the blow against his shoulder. With a deafening roar, the weretiger headbutted Yuri. Yuri caught the brunt of the blow on his helmet, but it sent stars flashing across his vision. His grip on his railgun weakened. Heavy paws tore it out of his hands.
Yuri slammed his left palm into the weretiger’s head, turning it, smashing its skull against the wall. In that same moment, Yuri’s right hand shot to his waist and closed around a hard polymer handle.
The weretiger roared once again, opening its massive jaws. Yuri retracted his exposed hand.
Then drew his kwaiken and drove the blade into the weretiger’s gut.
The Godman howled in pain and fury. He whipped his head back around, biting at Yuri. Yuri smashed his helmet into his nose. Cartilage crunched under the blow. Twisting his hips, Yuri wriggled the knife back and forth, widening the wound channel.
The Godman bent over, pulling Yuri’s railgun down. Yuri bent with him, flowing with the force. The Godman lifted his right paw, claws extended, ready to slash. Yuri hooked his left palm into the opening, attack and defense as one, simultaneously striking him in the head while warding off the incoming blow. In that movement, he ripped the knife free from the monster’s belly.
The Godman howled. He released Yuri’s railgun and circled his paws around, aiming for Yuri’s throat. Yuri ducked and pivoted through a counterclockwise arc.
And his right arm snaked under the weretiger’s left arm to stab the Godman in the side of the neck.
The point punched through fur and flesh. The blade sank to the hilt. Yuri twisted the knife and cut out the front of its throat. Blood gushed from the massive wound. Liquid gurgling issued from the shredded throat. The weretiger’s paws shot to the wound.
“Get clear! Get clear!” Kayla shouted.
Yuri jumped back.
She blasted the Elect in the face with her railgun.
Railgun in hand, Yuri did a quick three-sixty scan. A soldier lay by the doorway, drilled in between the head. A second Elect was slumped against a door, blood dripping from many wounds, hands and legs twitching.
Yuri wiped his blade off the weretiger’s back, sheathed the kwaiken, and shot the Elect in the temple.
Yuri and Kayla rushed down the short leg of the hallway. At the far corner, Yuri paused and leaned out.
Will and Karim-Galen dominated the lobby. Behind them, three corpses lay scattered across the hallway.
“Coming out!” Yuri called.
“Come out!” Will replied.
The team regrouped. On the opposite side of the elevator bank, a stairwell led to the roof.
“I count eight Tangos down,” Kayla said. “That should be the security element accounted for.”
“All that’s left is the priests, and the avatars,” Will said.
The team hustled up the stairs. Karim-Galen led the way. The werewolf booted the door open, and the four shooters emerged into the room.
The Church District was burning. Walls of smoke spread across the neighborhood. Tongues of flame licked the sky. Sirens howled from every direction. Red and blue light bars flashed across the sky, police cruisers and flying ambulances racing to the scene.
The two avatars ambled across the Shinbashi Bridge.
Facing Chrysanthemum Heights, they lifted their arms high. Dozens of weapons gleamed in the night. Energy crackled around the tips of staves and swords, tridents and maces, gathering in motes of red light.
“GET DOWN!” Karim-Galen roared.
Everyone hit the deck.
Red beams slashed through the night. Some cored through a neighboring high-rise to strike Chrysanthemum Heights. Others smashed into the edge of the roof, obliterating everything in their path. Killing light flashed above Yuri’s head, turning night to false day.
“Where are the jackpots?!” Yuri screamed.
“Ten o’clock!” Karim-Galen replied.
Illuminated in the lances of red light, in the middle of the long leg of the L, eight priests sat in a circle. They muttered softly to themselves, their hands on their laps, their souls melded with their gods to power the monstrous avatars. They were motionless.
They were not defenseless.
“Screw this!” Will yelled.
The energy barrage ceased. The avatars rushed forward with surprising speed, trying to find a better angle. Will rose, lifted his railgun, fired.
A dome of crimson light materialized, shielding the priests. The flechette disintegrated on impact, throwing out red lightning bolts.
The priests continued muttering. The avatars continued walking.
“What the fuck?” Will muttered.
“They’ve learned from last time,” Yuri said.
Will worked the crowd left to right, weapon now set to half-power, trading power for rate of fire, serving the targets at a steady one shot per second. Karim-Galen and Kayla joined him, deluging the priests in fire.
Nothing.
Yuri looked up to the heavens.
Closed his eyes.
Reached under his shirt and drew out his silver cross.
“Father God, we call upon you in our hour of need! The enemy seeks to destroy the innocent with black magics! That roaring lion, that ancient dragon, that beast with seven heads and ten crowns stands astride the world! Send forth your warrior angels! Defend us from evil! Reach out with your mighty hand and strike them down!”
A sudden wind howled through the city. In the skies above, a hole opened in the sea of clouds, revealing the moon. Full and bright, round and white, the pale orb gazed upon the world like a single unblinking eye. From its light, no shadow could hide, no man could run. Through the window in the heavens, a shaft of pale moonlight fell upon the ward.
The dome… vanished.
Someone wailed.
In surprise. In horror. In resignation.
The team reloaded.
Raised their railguns.
Fired.
The priests went down like bowling pins.
The avatars froze.
The metal monster was caught in mid-step, right foot panted, toes almost but not quite touching the ground. With its arms twisted about to face the high-rise, its balance was irrevocably broken. It tilted forward, coming to a rest on the narrow ball of its left foot. Caught in a precarious state of equilibrium, the slightest breeze could send it toppling.
And the air went still.
The doughy giant went limp. Its arms flopped to its sides. Its hands opened, scattering its weapons across the empty bridge and the river. It hunched forward, as though bowing slightly to the moon.
The team raced to the fallen priests, examining them with their flashlights. They were all down, but not all of them had taken rounds to the head. They rectified the situation with carefully-aimed coups de grace.
When the echoes of the last gunshot faded, Yuri looked up into the heavens.
“Thank you,” Yuri whispered.
The moon glowed.
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